Soul Food
by Belphegor
Summary: Five one-shots, five different recipes. 5. January 1945: How Schultz Learned To Stop Worrying And Let Prisoners Make Chicken Soup.
1. Garbure

**Author's note**: Recently I re-discovered _Hogan's Heroes_, remembered how great it was (wasn't hard!) and tracked the original (meaning undubbed) version on the Net, read a few stories (loved them)... And then a plot bunny popped into existence and started tugging on my sleeve. After almost a year of not being able to write a decent story, I jumped at the occasion. Whether this one is decent or not I leave to your appreciation.

It's not really a story so much as five one-shots, in chronological order, and each of them has something to do with a particular French (for the most part) recipe. I'm French (from the South West, to be precise) and while I'm not much of a cook I love good food, both in quality and quantity. It's a joy to finally be able to work that into a story :o)

As usual, a huge thanks to ChaosandMayhem, my fabulous beta reader. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

(Edited to thank Konarciq who pointed out the date discrepancy in the summary!)

_Edited after April 8th 2012_: I'm honoured, flattered and touched beyond belief that people voted for this story, and that it won bronze, silver and gold (!) Papa Bear Awards. It was incredible to see it nominated, and seeing it actually _win_ something rendered me speechless for at least half an hour. Thank you _so_ much. I mean, really.

_Disclaimer: CBS owns _Hogan's Heroes_, I don't. Stalag XIII is a great place to have a story, but I wouldn't want to own it. Too much bloody paperwork, for starters ;o)_

* * *

><p><strong>Soul Food<strong>

" Cuisiner suppose une tête légère, un esprit généreux et un cœur large. "

_(Cooking entails a clear mind, a generous spirit and a great heart_.)

Paul Gauguin

* * *

><p><em><strong>Chapter One: Garbure<strong>_

_February 13th, 1941_

It was on days like this one that Sergeant of the Guard Hans Schultz longed for his home the most, especially the large hearth with the nice rug in front, perfect for getting warm again after a long, cold, tiring day at work. While he knew that at least he had it better than the prisoners, the thought did little to cheer him up – or warm him up, for that matter.

A glance up at the clear, washed-out blue sky was all the confirmation he needed that things were decidedly not looking up.

It had not snowed in two weeks. The weather was too cold for snow.

Schultz stomped on the ice-covered ground, trying hard not to slip – if he slipped now, God knew where the momentum would take him – as he turned round the corner of the mess hall. The routine patrol was perfectly useless today. The prisoners were all huddled inside the poorly-heated barracks, probably trying to keep themselves warm with plans for escape. It was too cold for Schultz to begrudge them their dreams; he usually kept to his 'hear nothing, see nothing' policy as long as they didn't actually attempt anything too bold anyway.

Speaking of 'seeing', though …

The slight figure in the brown jacket climbing out the window of the officers' mess was too conspicuous for even Schultz to miss – or pretend he hadn't seen it. When the man had both feet on the ground, the sergeant reached out and grabbed the red scarf.

Corporal Louis LeBeau gave a startled yelp, then relaxed visibly as he caught sight of his captor.

"Oh, it's you, Schultz – bon Dieu, you shouldn't sneak up on people like that."

Every now and then, Schultz took a moment to wonder why he never seemed to be able to come off as frightening, least of all to this diminutive Frenchman who barely reached his shoulder, beret and all. So far, he hadn't been able to come up with a valid answer.

"What were you doing in the officers' mess hall, Cockroach?" he asked reproachingly, trying hard to look and sound suspicious and daunting. LeBeau glared up at him.

"You know, I really wish you wouldn't call me that."

"But I like cockroaches," Schultz said without even thinking – that happened to him a lot. "They can go without food, water, even air for a long time and still live, I think it's rather endearing. Besides, you – ach, never mind that. What are you doing here?"

LeBeau folded his arms across his chest, the very picture of stubbornness.

"I was looking for ice. For the champagne."

"Champagne! Was –" Schultz's brain caught up with his eyes and ears, and he frowned. "You are making fun of me."

"Non, vous croyez?"

Something chose this very moment to slip from under LeBeau's coat and fall to the ground with a thud. Schultz felt his eyes widen.

"That's a potato from the officers' mess! You have been stealing – why?"

There was a hint of disappointment in his voice. Usually, when things mysteriously went missing, it was common knowledge that the English Corporal from Barracks 2, Peter Newkirk, had at least a hand in it. Catching the little Frenchman red-handed was more of a surprise. Schultz half-expected Newkirk to come out the window too, throw up his hands and say, "All right, Schultz, it's a fair cop" and grin that grin of his that meant trouble on the way.

He was rather fond of Newkirk – it was hard not to be – but the man obviously was a bad influence.

There was no Engländer in sight, though. LeBeau was alone, and he was still determinedly glaring up at Schultz from under his red beret.

The effect would probably have been a little more impressive if he had not been shivering from the cold, and ended up dropping a carrot, an onion and half a cabbage when he bent to retrieve the fallen potato.

Schultz had never understood a word of French, but he knew a string of muttered curses when he heard one.

"LeBeau, I ought to put you in the cooler for thieving like that," he said with as much severity he could muster. Honestly, it was hard to play the harsh, uncompromising guard when these men brought out in him the same reactions that his children did.

"Go ahead," the corporal retorted as he quickly picked up the vegetables, "but _after_ I've made my garbure."

"Your what?"

"It's a French soup from the South West of France. You're supposed to put lots of things in it – cabbage, ham, bread, potatoes, a few onions, leech, a bit of duck – some duck fat would have been great." Once he had everything back in his coat, he stopped to blow in his hands. "We're almost out of Red Cross rations and the bread has frozen, so I – what?"

Schultz had vaguely registered the second part of LeBeau's speech. His mind had stopped at the first.

"You cook?"

LeBeau was starting to look a little blue around the edges, which made for a funny patriotic picture with his pale cheeks and his red scarf and beret. But the question did get a quick, proud smile from him.

"I was a chef, before the war."

"_Ooh_. Did you have a funny hat?"

LeBeau's face went completely blank, and for once it wasn't because he was trying to hide something.

"Pardon?"

"Those funny white hats that cooks wear – I've seen one in a restaurant, in Düsseldorf. It was a very fancy restaurant," he added as an afterthought.

The last time he'd remembered to take Gretchen to a nice restaurant had been two years ago. Before the war, when he still had his toy company and he still was a civilian. But it _felt_ a lot longer …

LeBeau gave him a pointed look, still shivering. "Look, Schultz, they're cold, and they're hungry – they need something hot and solid. You know Davies is skin and bones, and Newkirk is not getting any better. At this rate, next month he'll be dead."

The Frenchman's blunt words brought Schultz back to the present, and he stared at him. LeBeau looked completely serious.

Schultz thought of Newkirk – the cheeky, cynical Englishman who always had a twinkle in his eye and a witty retort on the tip of his tongue – buried in this cold earth, so far from his native isle. The world suddenly seemed a little bit colder.

Still, there was no harm in prodding a bit. After all, LeBeau might be exaggerating.

"I thought you didn't like Newkirk much. You two are always arguing," he ventured, only to receive a much fiercer glare.

"Just because he has no taste at all in cooking doesn't mean I don't like him. He's sharp, smart and actually rather funny. But," he added hastily, the glare fading from his eyes, "don't tell him I said that."

Schultz barely refrained from breaking into a large knowing grin.

"Oh, ja. I heard nothing, nothing."

He was rewarded with a warm smile.

"Merci, Schultz. Can I go now? I need to work on my garbure." The smile gave way to a look akin to that of a puppy dog facing a kick. "You can put me in the cooler later."

Was he looking like that on purpose? If he was, Schultz had to admit it was working, and working well.

Besides, he wouldn't wish the cooler on anyone just now. They could practically use it as an ice box with these temperatures.

_I know I'm going to regret this …_

"Ah, forget the cooler. Get back inside your barrack and make your soup. I heard nothing, I saw nothing too."

The Corporal's eyes lit up, and his sudden grin could have powered the whole camp for a week.

"Thanks a lot, Schultz."

He had not made two steps toward Barracks 2 when an idea suddenly struck Schultz. "Oh, Cockroach?"

LeBeau stopped in his tracks, half-turned and opened his mouth to say something, but apparently decided against it. "… Oui?" he eventually said, a bit warily.

"Do you think," Schultz asked, visions of hot, glorious meals dancing in front of his eyes, "if I gave you a little food from the mess hall, you could cook a little something for me someday?"

He was met with stony silence.

"It's been a really long time since I last had a decent apple strudel."

LeBeau stared at him.

"… Please?"

Maybe Schultz was pushing his luck a bit too far. After all, for the first couple of months after he had got off the truck, LeBeau had been dead set on loathing any German on sight, passionately, continuously and indiscriminately. It seemed that, since he was – and was likely to remain – the only Frenchman in the Stalag, he was determined to hate the "sales Boches" as much as he could to make up for the lack in countrymen.

Schultz privately thought that the corporal was angry enough for at least half a dozen men.

But weeks crawled by, roll call after roll call, and angry retorts and sarcastic gibes bounced off Schultz, bringing no other reaction out of the guard than occasional reproaches and chiding for his temper and language. Gradually, LeBeau just got tired of hating him and gave up.

They all did, after a while. _Thank God for that_.

Eventually, the Frenchman's eyes lost some of their deadpan quality, and he nodded.

"D'accord. I'll whip you up a strudel tomorrow. But … You're having chicken tonight in the enlisted men's mess, non?"

"Oh, yes. Boiled. It's Grüninger's turn to cook." Schultz barely repressed a shiver. He could not for the life of him imagine what the poor animal had done to deserve such a fate. "Why?"

"Don't throw away the water. Newkirk needs some chicken broth. And see if you can get your hands on a bit of beef next week, I'd like to try something with the rest of the onions and potatoes."

It occurred to Schultz, as LeBeau's gaze unfocused slightly, that the harshly cold winter had been hard on all of them. The Frenchman's build had been short but stocky five months ago, but now, even under the layers of clothing – including the temporary layer of vegetables – he was noticeably thinner.

"Ja, Corporal, I can do that. Now run along and make your soup – and don't forget my strudel!"

Schultz barely had time to catch a hasty, "Don't worry, I won't!" before LeBeau ran to his barracks as fast as he dared. There was no way to know whether the throwaway answer had been sarcastic or genuine, but it nevertheless left the sergeant in much higher spirits than he had been before.

A _real_ French chef. Well, they did get all sorts here at Stalag XIII.

_I can't wait to try his apple strudel_.

* * *

><p><span>Notes<span> (feel free to ignore them if you don't need them):

_Bon Dieu_: literally, "good God", but in context it's a milder version of "dammit".  
><em>Non, vous croyez?<em>: No, you think?  
><em>Merci<em>: thank you/thanks :o)

_**Next up**_: Gestapo officers, monkey business and marinades, oh my...


	2. Boeuf Bourguignon

**Author's notes**: Thank you so much for the positive response to the first chapter! Each comment brought a ridiculously big smile that lasted for a _long_ time. I hope you'll like the rest :o) (And thank you, Dust, for the past participles and the mind sauce... Mind, this last one was an interesting image :o)

Bœuf bourguignon, when well done, actually tastes quite good. It's another one of those hot, rich, very nourishing dishes that come from the countryside of Burgundy ('Bourgogne' in French), generally served with potatoes or pasta. Not my favourite, but I like it, especially in winter time.

Shutting up now :o)

_Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and settings of _Hogan's Heroes_, and I promise to return them when I'm done playing._

* * *

><p><strong>Soul Food<strong>

_**Chapter Two: Bœuf Bourguignon**_

_September 15th, 1942_

It should have been such a beautiful morning, really, Schultz reflected in retrospect. The weather was quite mild, the trees around the camp were wearing their most lovely autumn colours, and, best of all, there hadn't been a single hint of Barracks 2 monkey business during the night.

Not like the night before. Schultz still was in a cold sweat about the night before.

The guard had been doubled and sent to patrol around the camp last night, to make sure nothing happened … And, surprisingly, nothing did, if you didn't count Corporal Langenscheidt getting bitten by a badger around three in the morning. Since the badger was evidently not an Allied spy, Schultz felt safe reporting to Kommandant Klink that nothing suspicious was noted during the night.

So, when the long, dark Gestapo car drove majestically into the camp at eleven o'clock, Schultz started to get nervous. What made him even more nervous was that Gestapo people never failed to make the Kommandant nervous, and whenever Klink was nervous was always hell on Schultz's nerves …

Anyway. What could have been the end of a beautiful morning was turning into the promise of a wretched afternoon. Gestapo officers were frighteningly good at ruining a previously-perfect day.

The car stopped in front of the Kommandantur, dragging a small cloud of dust behind each wheel – the summer had been very dry – and Sergeant Schultz stood to attention as rigidly as he could, gripping his unloaded gun and staring far into the space in front of him.

By unhappy chance, this meant that he stared right at Barracks 2 and the handful of men who appeared to be working on it. Colonel Hogan and Corporal Newkirk sat on the roof, fixing the tiles, Sergeants Kinchloe and Olsen were busy with the broken shutters, and Corporal LeBeau was peeling potatoes.

This last particular activity was probably the only one that did not qualify as 'suspicious'. Schultz knew where those potatoes came from – the more-or-less secret little patch behind Barracks 11 – and where they were going – the prisoners' stomachs, via some French recipe, courtesy of LeBeau.

Everything else was potential trouble. Especially in light of today's visitors.

The driver's door opened, and a plainclothes goon (_man_, Schultz corrected himself inwardly, hoping the word would not show on his face somehow – maybe he did talk with the prisoners too much, like the Kommandant sometimes said!) opened the door for his officer. The man, a stony-faced, crisp-looking man in a trench coat, introduced himself as Major Horst Krüger, sent by the Gestapo Bureau in Hammelburg to investigate on potentially suspect goings-on around Stalag XIII.

As he knocked on Klink's door to announce the Major's surprise arrival, Schultz had a feeling he was not going to be received well at all by the Kommandant. Sure enough, he was not disappointed.

"What?" Klink yelped, jumping from his chair and hurriedly shuffling the papers on his desk into a semblance of order. "Why wasn't I told that – oh, never mind, just send him in. As though we didn't have enough problems as it is … Ah, good morning, Major! Such a pleasure, really, I'm delighted to –"

He had shifted gears mid-sentence, as usual. Schultz didn't know anyone who could start a sentence one way then finish it in a completely different tone better than Colonel Klink.

Major Krüger lifted a hand wordlessly; Klink's mouth snapped shut.

"Major Hochstetter has instructed me to lead an investigation," he said in a low, even voice that somehow scared Schultz – and, apparently, Klink as well – more than Hochstetter's nasal, excited growls. "It seems that a few men were spotted running from a top-secret facility near Hammelburg the night before last, and he appeared to think they might have hidden among the prisoners of this camp."

"Oh, come now, Major," Klink almost pleaded, a terrible attempt at a smile plastered across his face, "surely attempting to break _into_ a prisoner of war camp is even more foolish than trying to break out. No-one escapes Stalag XIII, as you may know, and –"

"Quiet, Klink."

"Yessir."

"Major Hochstetter's instructions were clear. I am to leave no stone unturned in the whole Stalag. One barrack in particular was mentioned …"

"_Schultz!_" Klink bellowed, startling the sergeant into a jump and a gasp. He had been trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible, and had obviously failed. "You will accompany the Major in his search for – what it is he's looking for. And I expect a report on the results afterwards!"

"Jawohl, Herr Kommandant," Schultz replied automatically. As he opened the door for the Major, Krüger gave him the once-over, and smirked.

Schultz had been on the receiving end of a lot of smirking in his time – particularly since he had been first stationed there as a guard – and he decided he didn't like this one. Not one bit.

Barracks 1 was easy enough to search; the men muttered and complained, but they reluctantly complied. As Schultz thought, they didn't even need to bother. All Krüger could unearth was eleven packs of cigarettes, a few risqué magazines and some dog-eared novel by a certain Raymond Chandler.

Still, Schultz let the Major conduct his thorough search, secretly glad of the time they took. After all, Hogan and his men were bound to be involved in something, somehow; but if they had enough time to hide whatever it was they had to hide, nothing would look suspicious and nobody would be in trouble …

_And speaking of trouble …_

"Morning, Schultz!" said a voice too cheerful not to hide a cocky grin as they got out of Barracks 1. "You didn't tell us you'd bring a friend today."

Sure enough, Colonel Hogan was still sitting on the roof – alone, this time – and smiling that trickster's smile of his. The sight reminded the German sergeant of an English saying. Something about a canary and a cat …

"Oh, please don't joke, Colonel Hogan," Schultz pleaded. "This here is Major Krüger, from the _Gestapo_." Perhaps a little insistence would make him realise the gravity of the situation –

_Oh, who am I fooling. Colonel Hogan would probably joke no matter the gravity of any situation._

Hogan deftly slid along the ladder to the ground, and gave the Major a long, hard look that bordered on insolence. Schultz did not like the gleam in his eyes at all.

"Major … Krüger, right?"

The Major nodded slightly, and Hogan's smile widened.

"Colonel Robert Hogan, Senior POW officer. Welcome to Barracks 2. We certainly have nothing here to hide from the Gestapo," he added with apparent conviction.

"This is for me to decide, Colonel," said the Major tersely, following him into the barrack while Schultz brought up the rear in fearful anticipation, seriously contemplating putting his hands over his eyes.

Everything inside appeared as normal as it ever did, however: the men either sat on their bunks or around the tables, smoking, reading or chatting. Newkirk was deep in conversation with Kinchloe – something about baseball and cricket, if the few words Schultz caught were right – and LeBeau was standing near the stove with a pan and a wooden spoon. The potatoes from earlier were frying gently with some mushrooms and a handful of herbs Schultz didn't recognise.

Nothing cooked on an old stove should have ever smelled so delicious.

"Tell me, Cockroach," he whispered while Krüger opened ever locker and looked in every nook and cranny, "do you think you could save some of this for me? What's it called?"

"Quoi, les pommes de terre aux champignons? It's hardly haute cuisine, but it'll have to do." He stirred the contents of the pan a bit and added with a quick smile, "Not today, sorry, Schultz. There's barely enough for everyone as it is."

"Oh, that's a shame." Schultz meant it. He had tasted some of the miracles LeBeau was able to work with just a base of the usual potatoes and a little seasoning.

In comparison, what was done to the unfortunate vegetables he and the other guards had sometimes made him regret the Geneva Convention didn't apply to guards as well as prisoners of war.

"You know what?" LeBeau continued confidentially with a twinkle in his eye, "if you can sneak in some real butter by Thursday, I should be able to make apple strudel. Ça vous intéresse?"

"Ja, ja, of course, I am very interested," Schultz replied, already licking his lips in anticipation.

"And of course, it comes entirely free of any quid pro quo or compensation," said Colonel Hogan's voice in his ear. He started and turned on his heels to find the American grinning at him.

"This is just as well, Colonel Hogan," he said severely, pointing a finger for extra effect – which, regrettably, seemed completely lost on Hogan. As usual. "Because you know you will get _nothing_ out of me. Not unless you try to torture me." He paused. "Please don't try to torture me."

"I know quite a few people back home who'd consider some of LeBeau's cooking as a particularly creative form of torture," came a Cockney drawl from the table from which Newkirk and Kinchloe were watching the Gestapo officer's search.

The Engländer smirked as he dodged the empty tin can that came flying his way.

"Oi, your aim was a bit off the left this time, Louis."

"Un de ces quatre je ne te raterai pas, espèce de …"

"Boys, boys!" Schultz pleaded, "stop! Really," he added as the two corporals threw occasional glares at each other, "sometimes I wonder if you don't keep doing this on purpose."

"Ouais, c'est ça …"

"Yeah, right …"

"Can't say it doesn't make for entertainment on those long, cold, boring Sunday afternoons," Hogan piped up, something flashing in his eyes too quickly for Schultz to really understand it. "But there's a time and a place. Right now may not be the best time."

The Englishman and the Frenchman gave strangely similar non-committal shrugs and respectively went back to their previous occupations. Schultz shook his head and was about to go back to watching the cooking process when a quiet voice made him turn to the centre of the room again.

"I wouldn't touch that if I were you, Major."

Sergeant James Kinchloe was not a man of many words, but he always had great presence. When he spoke, people listened.

Silence fell over the barrack as everyone stared at Krüger, who was holding a pot that had previously been tucked under a bunk in the corner. He had one hand on the lid, and turned to face them with a quizzical expression.

"Why is that?" he asked, an unsettling smile dancing across his face.

"Because it's my marinade," snapped an angry voice just behind Schultz. "Bas les pattes!"

"You know, foreign languages have never been my thing much," Hogan said, stepping up and placing a placating hand on LeBeau's shoulder, "but I think this means something along the lines of 'back the hell off', sir, pardon my French. In a manner of speaking."

Something plummeted in the area of Schultz's stomach. The boys _were_ up to something all right, and he prayed fervently that whatever it was could wait till Krüger was gone. It was never a good idea to come under the radar of a Gestapo officer. Not if you wanted to keep living.

Why couldn't Hogan obey at _least_ this simple unspoken rule of caution?

Krüger lifted the lid and inspected the contents.

"It looks … funny, but it smells good," he said, still quite calm – a calm that sent shivers down Schultz's spine. "What is it?"

"Beats me, mate, it's been lying 'round there since yesterday," Newkirk said lazily, not even sparing a glance at Krüger. "Thought 'e forgot about it."

"It's bœuf bourguignon, it's supposed to be marinating for twelve hours," LeBeau retorted with dignity.

"The things the French do to their food, it's terrible."

"It's still less cruel than British cooking. _You_ can't ever eat meat unless it resembles sole leather."

"Well, at least we don't torture it in red wine and God knows what else for twelve hours!"

"Non, you just drown everything in mint sauce!"

Both were getting worked up again, and Schultz's eyes were jumping from one to the other as though following a tennis ball, when Krüger snapped the lid shut and said, "Quiet!" in cold, metallic tones.

Surprisingly – or not, he _was_ Gestapo after all, and an officer to boot – it worked; the argument ceased immediately.

"Sergeant?" Krüger called; Schultz sprang to attention. "Is cooking permitted here in Stalag XIII? I seem to recall it was forbidden for prisoners of war to cook in the barracks."

Fortunately, Hogan stepped up before Schultz could scrape together a suitable answer.

"Oh, I'm not sure LeBeau would call this _cooking_, sir. More like putting scraps together and hope for the best. Right, Louis?"

LeBeau, meantime, had gone back to tend to his potatoes on the stove. He perked up at the question.

"Absolutely, mon Colonel. This isn't cooking, it's surviving. Real cooking, now … It's more about _living_, if you see what I mean."

"Very poetic," Krüger said dryly. "Well, I believe we're done for this barrack. I've seen nothing that warrants Gestapo interest. Sergeant?"

"Ja, Herr Major?"

"We'll continue with Barracks 3."

"Jawohl, Herr Major."

Getting out of the barrack was almost physical relief for Schultz; the rest of the inspection was bound to be more peaceful than that. If this was the worst the boys of Barracks 2 could dish out, he was safe.

_Wait a minute …_

There _had_ to have done something. Things had gone much too smoothly. Schultz patted his pockets with mounting panic, but could not find anything missing. Everything was in place.

A horrible thought sneaked into his mind like a cold draft. What if they had taken something from Krüger?

"Entschuldigung, Herr Major," he stammered as they reached the door of Barracks 3. "I think I forgot my helmet in Barracks 2."

"You mean the helmet that's currently on your head?" asked the Major curtly, one eyebrow raised.

_Oh._

"My … other helmet. Bitte, Herr Major, I will be back in a second. You can start without me, ja?"

He didn't even wait for the officer's answer and scrambled back to Barracks 2, opening the door just in time to hear loudly laughing voices suddenly quieted.

"Hey, Schultz," said Colonel Hogan, his eyes dancing with what Schultz regarded as unholy and unrepentant glee, "forgot something?"

"Forgot something … Colonel Hogan, _I_ did not forget anything," he almost whined, taking in the barely repressed laughs and the grins nobody was bothering to hide. "But perhaps Major Krüger forgot something, ja? Please, give it back, whatever it was!"

"Blimey, Schultz, you wound us!" Newkirk exclaimed, blue eyes widened in would-be innocence. "Nobody took a single thing from that man."

There was something with the way he said it – and with the grin he exchanged with Kinchloe – that made Schultz's hair stand on end. More than it already did.

"But if you didn't take anything from me … And if you did not take anything from _him_, either …" His brows knitted in thought; then his second most horrible idea of the day struck him and he turned to Hogan in desperation.

"Colonel Hogan … He _is_ a real Major from the Gestapo, isn't he?"

Hogan seemed to give the question some thought; then he planted his thumbs in the pockets of his jacket, looked him in the eye and said, "Do you _really_ want me to answer that, Schultz?"

Schultz closed his eyes.

"Ach du lieber …"

"Oh, by the way, Kinch," Hogan continued as if nothing happened, sauntering to the table, "are you sure the container was completely watertight? Wouldn't want the microfilm to be ruined."

"Shouldn't be a problem, Colonel. Whatever Louis used for the marinade, I don't think it's strong enough to eat through metal."

"I used the rest of the wine from Klink's table yesterday – I can't believe he was going to throw away half a bottle of Corsican red."

"Yeh're right, the nerve of that man …"

"Stop!" yelled Schultz, realising that putting his hands on his ears completely failed to block the treacherous words. "Whatever you boys are up to, I want to know nothing, I see nothing and I hear _nothing_!" He paused to wipe the sweat off his brow. "I'd better get back to the Major. The … not-Major. Gott im Himmel …"

"I think his brother-in-law's uncle's wife's cousin twice removed actually is a Major," said Newkirk, sounding much too serious not to be making fun of him. "So it practically makes him one too, right?"

The lightning-quick but large grin he shared with LeBeau did not go unnoticed by Schultz, who moaned.

"Colonel Hogan, one day you and your men will be the death of me."

"I sure hope not, Schultz," Hogan said, opening the door and showing him out with a friendly pat on the back. "Things would be a lot less fun without you around."

_Less fun …_

Schultz found himself standing outside the barrack, slightly stunned – as he already had many times before. How was it that they got themselves into shenanigans like that? Things had seemed much simpler before Colonel Hogan was captured and sent to Stalag XIII. All he'd had to do then was keeping the men from escaping and recovering them as peacefully as possible when they did escape, and if some things disappeared from the kitchen in times of serious food shortage in the barracks, well, he knew nothing about it …

… And he knew nothing about _this_, either, he decided, as he rushed to Barracks 3 as fast as he could. After all, it was only a handful of men up to a little monkey business in the middle of Bavaria.

Whatever it was about, it couldn't be _that_ important.

_Right?_

* * *

><p><span>Notes:<span>

_Quoi, les pommes de terre aux champignons__?_: 'What, potatoes and mushrooms?'  
><em>Ça vous intéresse?<em>: literally, 'does this interest you' – 'are you interested?' In the dubbed French version, the men use the informal 'tu' to address each other, even Hogan, who outranks them (IRL they'd more likely say 'vous' to him); but they use the more formal (less intimate) 'vous' in dialogue with Schultz and vice versa. Took my cue from there :o)  
><em>Un de ces quatre je ne te raterai pas, espèce de –<em>: One of these (days) I won't miss, you (insert unsaid derogatory word) 'Quatre' means 'four', so literally it's 'one of these four (days)'.  
><em>Ouais, c'est ça<em>: Yeah, (that's) right.  
><em>Bas les pattes<em>: hands (paws, really) off. Hogan's translation is a little bit exaggerated, but he certainly got the gist.  
><em>Jawohl<em>: certainly/yes sir.  
><em>Entschuldigung<em>: excuse me (as in 'Excuse me, you dropped this').  
><em>Bitte<em>: please.  
><em>Ach du lieber<em>: oh my God/goodness. Originally I wanted to put "_Ach du liebe Zeit_" but apparently it wasn't exactly what I meant.

* * *

><p>Boy, this chapter was hard to put together. If there's one thing harder than to think up a situation where the boys would need monkey business and organise said monkey business, it's writing it from Schultz's point of view. Because he sees and hears and gets a lot of things for somebody who knows '<em>noth<em>ing', but since he's not privy to the particulars of the plan, it makes his point of view rather limited. Hope the general idea came through all right …

On the other hand, writing Newkirk and LeBeau banter (faked or otherwise) was a joy. I really love these two guys. Their dialogue practically wrote itself, too :o)

**Next up**: In which Sergeant Schultz fight the cold with cassoulet and Stalag XIII numbers increase by one.


	3. Cassoulet à la Toulousaine

**Author's notes**: I hope everybody is having/has/has had a wonderful holiday :o) Here is another winter dish, better than it sounds, a South West (not my area, though) speciality. There was going to be a Christmas chapter, but the muse up and left three pages into it, and I just could _not_ get it to come back … So I embarked on another chapter, which I did finish. I never seem to be able to write anything seasonal :P

Joyeux Noël and Merry Christmas, everyone :o)

_Disclaimer: I own the gifts I purchased for my family and loved ones, and the ones I'll get tonight but have no idea what they are! Sadly, I don't think _Hogan's Heroes_ and its characters is in the mix, though._

* * *

><p><strong>Soul Food<strong>

**_Chapter Three: Cassoulet à la Toulousaine_**

_November 28th, 1942_

The snow had taken everybody by surprise.

Not that it was unheard of at this time of year, far from it; it was the suddenness and intensity that was unusual. The cold was damp, bone-chilling, and followed you everywhere, no matter how many covers you piled up to keep yourself from freezing at night.

Since snow had been falling non-stop for two days, shovelling detail had taken over every other activity in camp, to keep the roofs from caving in and the windows and doors from sticking. Schultz knew it was a dull, tiring job in the cold and wet, and the prisoners were very vocal about working in shifts all day long knee-deep in the snow. On the other hand, as Sergeant of the Guard, he also dealt with complains from Corporal Langenscheidt and the other men, who would rather be shovelling snow alongside the prisoners instead of standing guard over them while they worked, freezing their feet – and various other body parts, if they were to be believed – off.

This meant that every single man in the camp – prisoners and guards alike – was in a tetchy, miserable mood, and Schultz was no exception. Especially while he plodded through the falling snow in the early light of morning in the direction of Barracks 2.

It also didn't help that, as soon as he opened the door, he was greeted with cries of "La porte!" "Oi, shut the bloody door!" and "Yeah, you're letting all the cold out!"

They were all huddled around two tables that had been put together in the cramped quarters, Newkirk, Olsen, Davies, Kinchloe, Saunders, Harper, Baker and Addison; some were eating, some had not been served yet and by the look of it Saunders and Baker had just finished. They sat on Olsen's nearby bunk, not too far from the stove where LeBeau was stirring the contents of a large pot.

There was not a single one of them that didn't have dark shadows under his eyes and a wan look about him.

"Jolly jokers," Schultz mumbled, brushing snow off his shoulders and rubbing his fingers. "It's colder outside."

"Won't be for long, if this keeps up." Colonel Hogan stepped out from his office and took Saunders' recently-deserted place at the table. "And if old Iron Eagle doesn't get the men at least one extra blanket each, escapes won't be a problem. He won't have any prisoners left at all."

"At least, if we all die, with this weather you won't know the difference between 'ere and the Russian front," Newkirk grumbled, much of his usual biting sarcasm absent from his voice. He was shivering so hard the knuckles of his gloves strained where he clutched his fork. "Thanks, Louis. Smells ruddy marvellous."

This was to LeBeau, who had just poured into his plate a generous helping of what appeared to be beans. The rare compliment got a tight-lipped smile.

Schultz caught a particularly eloquent look from Kinchloe. If Newkirk not only accepted what the little French chef put in his plate, did not even make one disparaging comment, but thanked him honestly to boot, things were getting serious indeed.

Schultz felt sorry for them – they might be a troublesome lot, but they had good hearts, all of them – but he tried not to get sidetracked. He had a duty to do.

"Colonel Hogan, perhaps you'll want to speak to the Kommandant about more blankets and more wood for the stove –"

"Oh, I _will_, Schultz."

"– And you can do that later. That's what I came to tell you: Kommandant Klink wants to see you in his office. There's a new prisoner."

Hogan had just got himself some of the food; his fork stopped halfway between his plate and his mouth. Then he put it down with a stony expression.

"Whoever the unlucky guy is, he's got rotten timing. Okay, Schultz, I'm going." Before he opened the door, he turned to his men. "LeBeau, keep some of that stuff hot, the new guy will need a bite. And _I_ didn't get my breakfast."

"Oui, mon Colonel."

The door opening and closing brought a fresh wave of wet, cold, sticky snow. Everybody shuddered, not least Schultz despite his great coat. What he would not give right now for something piping hot …

Then he spotted the pairs of eyes staring at him from the table, and could not help getting a little worried. They looked like the same idea struck each of them at the same time, and with these men, it was _never_ a good sign.

And speaking of bad omens … Newkirk's cheeky grin – a somewhat toned-down version of it, anyway – resurfaced.

"Oh, Schultzie? Why don't you sit down and tell us all about that new bloke, eh?"

"It _would_ be a shame to let the cassoulet go cold." Of course, LeBeau did not miss a beat. "You can have the plate, there's still a lot left in the pot."

"What did you say it was?" asked Schultz, determined not to give in without at least some semblance of reluctance.

"Cassoulet. Beans, a few sausages, onions, bits of carrot, ham, and bouquet garni."

"What?"

"Herbs," Kinchloe explained succinctly. "So – new prisoner, huh?"

Between Kinchloe's quiet smile, Newkirk's piercing gaze, Olsen and Addison's steady stare and the still-steaming plate in LeBeau's hands, Schultz's inner resistance didn't stand a chance. Even though he was honestly tempted to fall back on his 'I know _nothing_' routine, the relative warmth of the barrack and the promise of a good hot meal was too much.

He sat at the table where Harper and Davies had just left, squirmed himself a spot between Olsen and Newkirk, and broke into a heartfelt smile when LeBeau put the plate in front of him.

"Ja, an American – with a big jacket like Floyd's and a furry hat. He seemed nice enough, but there's something funny about him." He stopped to swallow his mouthful of beans; the plate was still steaming faintly, and the contents burned his tongue on the way down. It felt wonderful. "He didn't say much on the way from Stalag 5 – that's what Corporal Langenscheidt said – but he doesn't look like the quiet type to me."

Schultz could feel himself thawing from the inside. His toes were still curled up with the cold, his fingers still blue and sore, but his chest and stomach were gradually warming their way up to normal.

"What d'you mean, 'doesn't look like the quiet type'?" Newkirk asked with an eyebrow raised as he shifted a bit down the bench, allowing LeBeau to sit beside him with his own plate. Schultz shrugged, and gulped down another mouthful.

"He has a look about him, that's all. You know how it is for new prisoners, at first they don't want to say a word …" He trailed off as a number of variations of the same dark look passed on the faces of everyone around him. Sometimes – not often – he tended to forget that these men were essentially in prison. _They_ were not likely to forget it.

He tried to rally the best he could.

"… But after some time, they are more like themselves again. And Sergeant Carter looks like a nice boy. So … Was ist das!"

His fork had just caught something – a sort of strange little bundle of green, with leaves and a few stems sticking out, with a bit of string tied around it. He stared at his find, nonplussed.

LeBeau's eyes went round; he gave up trying to speak around the mouthful of beans, and instead scrambled to his feet to pick the bundle up and drop it back into the pot on the stove.

Kinchloe gave a quiet chuckle. "You found the bouquet garni, Schultz."

Schultz stared around, still taken aback; his eyes found Newkirk, who shrugged.

"Don't look at me, mate, I only stole it – don't even know what it's for."

"It adds flavour to the dish. You're not supposed to eat it, though," LeBeau explained, taking up his place near Newkirk again. "There's thyme in this one, with parsley and sage."

The Engländer's offhand remark belatedly registered. "Oh, Newkirk, you went and stole it? From where? LeBeau, you asked him to –?"

There went that cheeky smile again.

"Nah, Schultzie, I was just pulling yer leg. We bought that at the market in Hammelburg last Saturday."

Schultz's heart rate slowed down, and he sagged a bit. "Oh, that's good." _Wait a minute …_ "What! Hammelburg? But you –" He groaned. "Monkey business again. You never, never stop. You never think that you could get in serious trouble – and get _me_ in serious trouble, too! When Carter gets here," he added earnestly, "I hope you don't try to include him in your usual mischief as well!"

The reactions ranged from mild outrage to looks so innocent it made him instinctively want to search his pockets – Newkirk's was the worst, as always.

"Schultz, mate, I'm disappointed in you."

"Yeah," Baker added from his bunk, "that's not a very nice thing to say."

"Just after we discussed making you an honorary member of the Escape Committee, too."

Schultz almost choked on the beans. He managed to swallow and goggled at Olsen.

"You have an Escape Committee?"

"Sure, guys gotta have a hobby."

"We were thinking of making badges, too," said LeBeau, his face absolutely deadpan, "but we couldn't agree on what to put on them. After all, we all come from different parts of the world."

"Yeah, Saunders suggested a kangaroo, but nobody listened. Wonder why."

"Shut up, Davies – like a leek was any better!"

Schultz groaned. "Oh, quiet. I don't know if you are making fun of me or not, but I hear nothing and I know nothing about that."

Kinchloe gave a rare wide white-tooted smile.

"Even about the new guy? Where is he going to bunk?"

Either the plate was too small, or his portion had been. Schultz realised he had cleaned the whole thing off thoroughly in record time.

"Here, in this barrack; there's a few unoccupied bunks. This one there should do …" He stopped as he caught a look between some of the men – it certainly was meaningful, but whatever meaning it had was lost on him. So, as usual, he chose to ignore it.

"Well, I'd better go get him – the Kommandant and the Colonel will have finished interrogating him soon." He rose from the bench – ignoring the ominous creak of protesting woodwork – and stole a forlorn glance at the pot on the stove. What he had eaten had done wonders to warm him up, and it _had_ been delicious, but there had not been anywhere near enough for his liking.

Maybe some other time.

"Thank you for the meal, Cockroach," he said with as much heart he could muster while thinking about the cold, long day ahead of him. After all, the French chef always looked very pleased whenever people praised his cooking skills, and compliments cost nothing. "It was perfect. If I can get my hand on a duck or a goose next time I'm in town, you can make some more, ja?"

Sure enough, LeBeau's face brightened instantly.

"Merci, Schultz. That would be great. Or I can make something else – I have a lot of recipes for duck and goose."

It was on occasions like these – when the prisoners weren't running circles around him, or Kommandant Klink wasn't berating his Sergeant of the Guard for his incompetence – that Schultz didn't mind that not a single prisoner in the Stalag seemed to fear him. Not one bit.

He plodded his way to the Kommandantur, warmer than he had felt for days.

When he came back to Barracks 2 with Colonel Hogan and the new prisoner in tow, he stayed just long enough to watch the introductions and the men's reactions. He was not disappointed.

"Guys," said Hogan, clapping a friendly hand on the new prisoner's back, "this is Sergeant Andrew Carter, US Army Air Forces. He's gonna be a fellow guest of the Krauts for the duration. Say hi, fellas."

Baker, Saunders, Davies and Addison got down from their bunks as the rest of the men gathered around Carter; Kinchloe stepped up to shake his hand, Newkirk threw an arm around his shoulders and proceeded to introduce everyone, until LeBeau got a hold of him, made him sit at the table and put a steaming plate of cassoulet in front of him.

"All right, everybody, let him eat. Newkirk, you can give him back his watch now," said Hogan, sitting down at the table in order to finally enjoy his delayed breakfast, a gleam of amused affection dancing in his eyes.

Newkirk complied with a theatrical flourish.

Schultz watched the bemused look on Sergeant Carter's face turn into a huge grin; then he closed the door and trudged back to Klink's office with a smile of his own.

For all the problems they caused, and the trouble and worry they regularly put him through, these men had a way of making someone feel happy and warm.

In more ways than one.

* * *

><p><span>Translationsnotes:

_La porte!_: (Close) the door!  
><em>Was ist das?<em>: What's that?

'Mon Colonel' doesn't mean 'my Colonel' – it comes from what used to be the proper way of addressing officers of equal or higher rank, which was '_monsieur le_ Lieutenant/CapitaineColonel', etc. Eventually, the 'monsieur' got shortened into 'mon' (which I find funny, because '_mon_sieur' and '_mon_' are pronounced quite differently). If you're, say, a sergeant and you're talking to a colonel who is a woman, you don't say "mon Colonel" either; you say "Colonel"; if you're a civilian, you can say "Madame le Colonel". Yes, French language is complicated, even for native speakers.

Fun trivia: there's an urban legend that says that, after the defeat of the French "Marine Royale" at Trafalgar, Napoleon 1st held the officers responsible and decided to punish them by not using the "mon" before the rank. Whether this is true or not, now the proper way to address an officer of higher rank is either just "Amiral/Capitaine/Commandant" etc. (almost always used) or "Monsieur/Madame l'Amiral/le Capitaine", etc.

Joyeux Noël again :o)

_**Next up**_: Is the gratin dauphinois burning?


	4. Magret de Canard et Gratin Dauphinois

**Author's note**: This chapter is the longest (but not, curiously, the one that took me longest to write), and possibly my favourite of the lot. The date is a clue to a main plot point – kudos to those who can guess what before it's mentioned in dialogue :o)

Magret de canard – usually just called "magret" – is roasted duck breast (Sud-Ouest cuisine tends to feature duck prominently), and together with gratin dauphinois, it's probably one of my very favourite dishes when done well. It's not gourmet food (it does require some culinary knowledge, though, compared to something like garbure, which is basically leftover soup), but it's absolutely delicious.

Thank you, Konarciq, for the correction on the German sentence :o) As usual, translations/notes are at the end of the chapter. I hope you like!

_Disclaimer: I now am the proud owner of a huge, illustrated biography of Alan Moore, among other things, and I do have a magret in the freezer that's just waiting for our stomachs to go back to normal after all the Christmas food we've had … But I don't own _Hogan's Heroes_. Ah, well._

* * *

><p><strong>Soul Food<strong>

**Chapter Five: Magret de Canard (et Gratin Dauphinois)**

_August 25th, 1944_

Being Sergeant of the Guard in the toughest, most escape-proof Stalag in all of Germany had a lot of downsides – at least, it felt so to Schultz. However, it also had (fortunately) a few perks. And being Kommandant Klink's food-taster was undoubtedly his favourite perk of all.

Officially, he was in the kitchen to watch LeBeau, but also Carter and Newkirk, who had been drafted – so to speak – into waiting tables, as well as check they did not try to escape or tamper with the food. Unofficially, it meant that he got to taste some of the most delicious dishes he had ever tasted with little to no afterthought, because he would sooner eat his helmet than suspect the chef of poisoning the food he prepared. His Cockroach loved his 'cuisine' too much to spoil it like that.

A quick glance in the Frenchman's direction confirmed Schultz's opinion. Considering the skill and precision – not to mention the obvious enthusiasm – he showed slicing through the fresh duck breast, he would probably rather grab a knife than a bottle of rat poison.

As much as Schultz loved to eat, the step of cutting through bloody former parts of animals had always made him feel a little queasy. He looked away, and his gaze fell on Carter, who was sitting back-to-front on a nearby chair, wearing a puzzled sort of expression.

"You know, LeBeau," he said thoughtfully, "there's something I just don't get."

LeBeau looked up from his duck for a second. "What is it?"

"This thing has blood all over, and you haven't fainted or anything. How come?"

Schultz turned from Carter to LeBeau, confused.

"'Fainted'? When did you faint, Cockroach?"

LeBeau proceeded to turn as red as his sweater and mumbled something Schultz didn't catch. So he looked at Carter again.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there was this time when he got hurt, and we thought it was really bad – but then actually it wasn't that bad, really –" The American spoke quickly, in what was probably meant to be an offhand tone, but alarms blared off in Schultz's head. The specific 'monkey business' type of alarms.

"Hurt how?"

"Nicked 'imself peeling potatoes," said Newkirk's voice behind them before either Carter or LeBeau could answer. The Englishman put down the empty hors d'œuvres tray and started filling it again, adding as an afterthought, "And it wasn't a very big nick at that."

LeBeau stiffened, and Schultz wondered why he absently rubbed his right shoulder. "Tu parles," he muttered. Newkirk shot him a pointed look, then turned back to Schultz with an unreadable expression.

"Should've seen this, mate. One minute everything's fine, the next he's on the ground, out like a light. Scared us half to death, too," he added with a mild glare while Carter smiled.

Schultz had a feeling the story didn't ring exactly true, but he was willing to bet the last part was. He had known Newkirk long enough to recognise the truth lurking behind the sarcasm most of the time.

It didn't seem possible for LeBeau to turn any redder, but somehow he managed it. "What was your question again, Carter?" he deadpanned, deliberately not looking at Newkirk, who was smirking again.

"How come you're not upset by bloody meat?" asked Carter, not one to let go of an idea once he got it. LeBeau gathered the slices of meat, added a bit of seasoning and a splash of honey, and paused, as though mulling over the answer.

"I don't know," he said honestly. "It's just not the same thing. This is just meat juice, I guess, but blood … Blood is completely different."

Carter nodded, apparently satisfied with the answer, and after a second followed Newkirk into the dining room. LeBeau stared into the meat for a second, then shrugged and put the dish into the oven. There was already something in it, and the delicious smell of cheese and potatoes lingered long after he closed the oven door.

Schultz closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. "What is it called again, what you're making?" he asked, eager to steer the conversation to a safer subject. LeBeau barely glanced back to answer him as he rummaged around the nearby cupboards.

"Gratin dauphinois. Slices of potatoes baked in milk with grilled cheese topping." He emerged with a small bottle that was three-quarters empty, and frowned. "Schultz, the next time Klink asks for crème anglaise, you tell him we're almost out of vanilla."

"Tell me if I've got this one wrong," said Newkirk's voice behind Schultz again, making him jump, "but doesn't 'crème anglaise' mean 'English cream'?"

"Yes it does, and yes you can brag now –"

"Don't tempt me," the Englishman interrupted with a wicked smile. "It's just that Klink's guest might take exception to that. Apparently this General Falke was a big man during the Blitz." He paused. "Mind if I tell the Kraut he's having Englische Creme?"

This got a quick smile from LeBeau. "Not at all, go ahead – but please, work on your pronunciation."

"Bit rich coming from you, you don't speak a word of German!"

"I _meant_ French."

"Are they fighting for real, this time?" Schultz whispered to Carter, who was pouring three glasses of that Spanish cold tomato soup he couldn't remember the name of. "It's hard to tell, with them."

Carter finished pouring the last of the soup with great concentration, then gave one of his trademark lopsided grins. "They're not really fighting. LeBeau got some bad news from home lately, and this is just Newkirk's way of putting his mind off it."

"I'm not sure LeBeau appreciates the thought," Schultz mused, looking at the two. Maybe there was something to be said about Newkirk's 'cheering up' method, though, he inwardly amended, spotting the spark in the Frenchman's eyes that seemed to have left these past few days.

"Uh, guys?" Carter called when the two belligerents stopped to breathe. "Soup's getting cold. I mean, warm."

The American must be right, Schultz reflected as he watched the heated discussion abruptly stop. Jackets and hats were straightened, trays were picked up, and LeBeau said, as serious as though he was declaring war, "Messieurs, dinner is served."

Schultz had introduced the General to Klink's office earlier, but he had not paid him a lot of attention then. The man who now sat at Klink's table was tall, thin, with jet-black hair and beady eyes of a startlingly blue colour. He was perhaps ten years younger than Schultz, but his hard-cut face and long, wiry frame made him look older than he probably was.

General Heinrich Falke had such a strong, commanding presence that it almost reduced his wife Waltrude – a petite, cold-looking woman who must have been quite pretty a decade or two earlier – to a purely decorative role. However, Schultz caught her glancing fleetingly at Kommandant Klink, who was happily babbling about a concert he had attended in Berlin before the war, and was chilled by the cold, calculating contempt that flashed in her eyes for a second before she switched back to the part of the meek, polite wife.

The cold soup – which was quickly identified as 'gazpacho' – went down well with Klink and his two guests, as well as Schultz, who as usual was requested to taste a bit of everything before it was served. Needless to say, it took a lot of self-control for him not to drink the whole thing. As usual.

He finally spotted Klink's narrowing stare behind the monocle, though.

"Well, Schultz? Is it safe for us to dine now?" he asked impatiently. Schultz licked his lips, just in case there was anything left on them.

"Ab-so-lutely, Herr Kommandant." He immediately regretted being so final so soon; perhaps, if he didn't sound so certain next time, he could get second helpings?

"This is a most unusual arrangement you have there with your prisoners, Kommandant," said Frau Falke lazily, barely acknowledging Newkirk pouring her a glass of wine.

Klink beamed. "Oh, it's not really an arrangement. I just promised our senior POW officer that all prisoners would be allowed one extra bread ration if he let me use his men for the evening."

"So it _is_ an arrangement, then," Falke said coolly. Klink's smile froze.

"Indeed, Herr General, it is an arrangement – a mutually beneficial arrangement. In fact, General Burkhalter was here just last week and he –"

"_How_ is dear old Albert, by the way?" Frau Falke interrupted with supreme aplomb as Schultz sampled one of the eggs mimosa. "We haven't had the pleasure of seeing him for at least four months."

"We were in Paris for a while," Falke continued without missing a beat while Klink opened and closed his mouth, rather floored by the general's wife's rudeness but clearly not daring to call her out on it. "Fortunately my leave ended before the … troubles began."

"Yes, I did hear there had been something of a scuffle recently," said Klink, eager to appear well-informed but desperate for updates on the Western front that did not come from the significantly untrustworthy radio.

Falke gave a cold smile. "'Is', Klink, 'is' – present tense. Last I heard, the rabble was still fighting in the streets. Really, this last leave had perfect timing; God knows what the landscape will look like after von Choltitz razes the city to the ground."

A sudden sharp sound of breaking glass made everybody start, and Frau Falke let out an undignified yelp. The wine bottle Carter had been holding had smashed on the floor, splashing her dress with burgundy red.

"Gosh, I'm sorry, ma'am, it just slipped … Well, I guess your dress is a little bit stained, let me fix that for – _ow!_"

Frau Falke seemed to have thrown the 'ornamental wife' image out the window, and was hollering at Carter and walloping him upside the head with her rolled-up napkin. Carter flailed to get his balance and grabbed her chair, General Falke rose from his own chair to defend his wife, while Klink tried desperately (and perfectly uselessly) to calm things down.

In the end, Schultz all but picked up Carter from the ground – rescuing him from the clutches of the furious woman – pushed him into the kitchen, and closed the door behind them with a sigh of relief.

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes again was a white-faced LeBeau standing in front of him clutching the kitchen knife he had used to carve the meat, his dark eyes burning.

Schultz had known Louis LeBeau for almost four years, but he could not help blanching a little. A five foot three man in an apron and a chef's hat should never have looked that scary.

"'Raze the city to the ground'?" he asked quietly, and this eerie calm was so much worse than his usual fiery temper.

Carter had recovered quickly; he straightened his jacket with a determined look on his face and strode to the tap to rinse his hands, indifferent to the tension.

"Don't worry, Louis, you know Kraut generals are always full of hot air. Nobody in their right mind would ever order to completely destroy Paris."

A treacherous but persistent thought knocked on the back door to Schultz's brain. 'Nobody in their right mind' would, there was no doubt about that. But … rumours had been flying for a while … The kind of rumours that could get you killed just by listening to them, and not in a nice, clean way like getting slaughtered on the Russian front while already dying of typhus, either.

LeBeau appeared to have the same objection, but Schultz noted with a no small amount of relief that he looked less strung up. He put the knife back on the table, for a start.

"They've been fighting for six days now," he muttered grimly. "If von Choltitz gets his reinforcements, it will be a massacre."

Schultz did not ask how he could possibly know that – Hogan and his men had their way of knowing things. He was thinking about what he had heard about cities that revolted: most of the people ended up dead. Men, women, old people, children even.

It made him feel cold all over, and a little bit sick.

"Where's Newkirk?" he asked, eager for a change of subject. LeBeau was putting the finishing touch on the main course; he looked at Schultz with the ghost of a smile.

"You fell back and left him behind? Honestly, Schultz, call yourself a soldier?"

"Think he got some of the wine on him," said Carter in a light tone, with a glance and a nod to LeBeau that obviously meant something for them but not to Schultz. "He must've gone to the bathroom."

"Oh, gut, gut." Hopefully, this was true. Being left alone with that unpleasant general, his equally unpleasant wife, and a flustered Klink was not something Schultz would wish on his worst enemy, let alone an admittedly troublesome but ultimately nice boy like Newkirk. Besides, the Engländer had fought in the war, been captured and sent here – further torture was against the Geneva convention, not to mention completely unnecessary.

Hoping against hope that the situation had defused by now, Schultz followed Carter – who, he noted admiringly, ambled into the dining room as though nothing had happened – and tried to take up as little space as he could … Definitely not an easy task.

Thankfully, things seemed to have calmed down: everybody was sitting in their chair and did not appear to be fuming too much, although Frau Falke threw a dirty glare at the American. There was no trace of Newkirk anywhere, and Schultz caught himself hoping the couple hadn't murdered him and stashed the body somewhere.

"Magret de canard avec gratin dauphinois," Carter announced, tripping a little over the '_r_'s but making a valiant effort.

Klink smiled, visibly relieved at the distraction.

"Thank you, Carter. Schultz, do your duty."

There was a lot of duties Sergeant Schultz did reluctantly, but this one was not one of them. The potatoes and cheese melted in his mouth; the addition of crispy but still soft duck meat with a hint of honey made the whole thing nothing short of sublime.

"Well?"

"Just one more, Herr Kommandant, I am not quite sure …"

Klink's face abruptly became about as friendly and open as the door to the cooler.

"You haven't fallen over yet, have you?" he snapped. "There is nothing wrong with this food, stop stuffing yourself!"

"Jawohl, Herr Kommandant." _Ah, well_. At least he had tried, this time.

Nobody spoke for five minutes while they ate – or rather, the general and his wife were silent, and something about their attitude discouraged Klink from attempting to make conversation. Finally, when Frau Falke had swallowed her last mouthful of magret, she made a small noise of contentment and crooned, "This was delicious. Kommandant, you'll make sure to give the chef our regards, won't you?"

"This was indeed quite good," Falke said, looking at the leftovers on the platter with a narrowed eye. "How did you get your hands on a duck? I heard that meat was getting scarce in Hammelburg these days." He frowned. "I hope you don't dabble in black market, Klink."

The Kommandant turned bright red, swallowed his mouthful with some difficulty and stammered, "Oh, no, General, I don't dabble in – I've never dabbled in my life. There's a farm twenty kilometres from here, and sometimes I buy their products. They are serious, hard-working people, very dedicated to the Fatherland."

Schultz spotted Carter lowering his head to hide a smile, and was very glad nobody else seemed to have noticed. That way, he could quickly forget that he had seen anything.

Falke opened his mouth to say something, but was cut short by Corporal Langenscheidt rushing into the room without even knocking. "Entschuldigen Sie, bitte, Herr General," he panted, "there's a Lieutenant Schäffer for you on the phone. He said he's the aide of Field Marshall Sperrle and it's urgent."

Everyone stared at Langenscheidt, who reddened even more. Falke stood up and followed him to Klink's office without a word.

Schultz met Carter's curious gaze; the American raised his eyebrows in unmistakeable 'Well?' manner, and shrugged imperceptibly. This unexpected development was news to him, as well.

Falke was back not four minutes later, looking as though someone had hit him on the head with a plank. He sat back down, took his napkin with a slightly shaking hand, and said quietly, "Field Marshall Sperrle is calling all his units back to France. I'm to leave tomorrow at dawn."

Frau Falke put down her glass with extreme care. Klink's eyes went round. Schultz heard Carter hold his breath, and only then remembered to breathe, himself.

"We lost Paris. Von Choltitz surrendered."

"What about the Führer's orders?" Frau Falke asked in a near whisper. Falke shook his head, anger seeping through underneath the shock.

"The coward disobeyed. The city still stands."

Relief flooded Schultz at the thought of another bloodbath averted, and from the corner of his eye he saw Carter sagging a bit with a barely-audible "Phew." What surprised him at first was the very similar reaction from Klink, but in hindsight it shouldn't have. For all his faults, Kommandant Klink hated blood about as much as Schultz did.

In the stunned, heavy hush that had followed the General's words suddenly came a wild, inarticulate yell, and even if it was completely incomprehensible – at least to Schultz – there was no mistaking the sheer unbridled joy behind it … Or the language.

It lasted for a full minute.

"I take it your chef is French?" Frau Falke asked dryly when LeBeau stopped to breathe. "Although I must say the menu was something of a giveaway."

"Yes, yes, he is," Klink muttered, having gone from slightly pale to deep crimson with embarrassment in a matter of minutes. It didn't help that they all could hear singing cheerfully from the kitchen now. The words – belted out with both talent and enthusiasm – Schultz didn't understand, but it was crystal-clear what the song was about. Besides, there was a sort of blithely cheeky undertone to it that reminded Schultz of the rare downright unholy grin the Frenchman would sometimes give him after a bit of monkey business.

_Paris sera toujours Paris  
>La plus belle ville du monde<br>Malgré l'obscurité profonde  
>Son éclat ne peut être assombri …<em>

Schultz deliberately avoided looking at Carter. He was certain that if he did, he would not be able to hold back his laughter anymore.

"_Schultz!_" Klink half-snapped, half-whined, faltering under the still silent General's stare. "Get in there and make him stop!"

"And bring him here, as well," Frau Falke said with a curious expression on her face. "I believe it's customary to thank the chef after such a good meal."

Schultz retreated hastily to the kitchen.

There he found LeBeau whisking egg whites while he sang, looking the polar opposite of his earlier dark countenance. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes shone, and his smile could have been measured in kilometres.

"_Sa bonne humeur et son –_ Schultz! Did you hear …? Yes, of course you heard. Isn't this – isn't it – oh, et puis tant pis pour l'anglais! C'est merveilleux, c'est formidable, c'est pas croyable …!"

"I know, Cockroach, I know," said Schultz as patiently as he dared knowing the Kommandant, a general and his wife were waiting behind the door. "And I'm very, very happy." He paused, then looked around as something odd struck him. "Where did Newkirk get to? I thought he was here all this time."

LeBeau made a wide dismissive gesture, the whisk still in his hand. It was fortunate the whites were properly stiffened – otherwise bits of egg would have been flying across the kitchen.

"He's around, Schultzie. Don't worry, he'll turn up. By the way, could you get the crème anglaise from the refrigerator? Merci bien."

Schultz complied without really thinking, but as he passed the bowl to LeBeau he remembered what he was supposed to do in the first place.

"Maybe I should put it back. Frau Falke said she wanted to see you."

The elation made a bit of room for a perplexed look.

"They haven't had their dessert yet," the Frenchman pointed out. Schultz shrugged.

"Perhaps, but apparently they want to congratulate the chef." He dropped his voice very low, just in case. "Between you and me, I think the Gnädige Frau has terrible manners. She was really rude to the Kommandant, and she hit Carter with her napkin."

The last part made LeBeau frown slightly, but joy was still shining in his eyes. "Well, she's a general's wife – she can afford bad manners. All right, give me one minute to finish my îles flottantes."

The 'îles flottantes' turned out to be floating islands: meringues floating on crème anglaise. LeBeau added a trickle of caramel on each one and placed the plates on a tray, finishing with a deliberately over-dramatic flourish. "Okay, Schultzie, lead the way."

Schultz rolled his eyes, and did lead the way.

Newkirk still wasn't in the dining room, he noticed with growing concern, but he appeared to be the only one who did. Carter was still loyal to his post, standing near the table with a bottle of white wine and getting occasionally glared at by Frau Falke; General Falke seemed to have slipped back into his earlier aloof, cold persona; and Klink's relief at the lack of inappropriate Gallic outbursts had a wary edge to it, as though he kept expecting one.

LeBeau still wore the most ridiculously big grin on his face, and Schultz, watching General Falke out the corner of his eye, wished he didn't.

"Félicitations, monsieur," said Frau Falke in a sweet voice that raised the short hairs on the back of Schultz's neck. "This dinner was exquisite."

"Vous parlez français, madame?" LeBeau's tone was the very model of respectful surprise, and Schultz prayed he continued in that vein.

"My wife has an excellent education," Falke cut in, a lot more curtly than he should have. "Which is more than I can say for some." Exactly who was obvious from his tone.

"Oh, I completely agree, sir," LeBeau retorted straight away, his smile not faltering a bit. "Some people have absolutely no manners at all. I mean, invading countries is one thing, but replacing all the road signs with German ones? That was just rude."

Schultz's eyes went from one to the other, his spoon of crème anglaise forgotten in his hand, completely missing the fact that he was still eating out of Klink's plate. He needed not have worried, however; the Kommandant's expression, when the sergeant unfroze and glanced at him, put him in mind of a rabbit facing an incoming Tiger tank while being too scared to move.

Falke dropped his own spoon on his plate with a sharp clink.

"One idiot surrendering some city to riffraff does not justify insolence, especially from a prisoner of war. You will apologise immediately."

Schultz closed his eyes, having a pretty good idea what would come next.

"General, I have only one word for you," said LeBeau cheerfully, triumph and defiance vying for first place in his eyes, "and that's what the Général Cambronne said to the English when they asked him to surrender at Waterloo."

Frau Falke choked on her glass of wine, and her husband pursed his lips. If looks could kill, this one would have obliterated the chef.

"Colonel Klink," he said, slamming his napkin on the table and springing up, "I demand this prisoner be taken to solitary to spend an adequate period of time reflecting on what is acceptable and what is not."

Klink leaped from his chair and stammered, "Jawohl, Herr General. I mean, of course, General, I can guarantee he will. _Schultz!_" he yelled, even though the Sergeant was standing right next to him. "Take this man to the cooler at once, I will decide on the number of days later. _Now_, Dummkopf!"

Schultz was still checking his ear for damage with his pinkie; the Kommandant's last word made him start and he jumped to attention. "Ja_wohl_, Herr Kommandant!" Then he deflated and sighed. "Come along, Cockroach."

Thankfully, LeBeau didn't protest or launch into a diatribe in French. He didn't need to. The expression on his face spoke for him, and nobody – not even Schultz – could miss the hard, blazing look lurking behind the smile.

"Oh, before you go," Frau Falke piped up, raising a gloved hand and glancing idly at the chef, "could you tell us what this dessert is called? I don't believe I've tasted anything like this before."

"Ce sont des îles flottantes," he answered, still grinning.

"With crème anglaise," said a familiar voice just behind the two of them – how _did_ that dratted Engländer do that? "It means 'Englische Creme', you know."

Sure enough, Newkirk was standing there as though he had never left, smiling impishly, his posture a picture of would-be offhandedness. He was probably quite aware that he looked about as casual as the cat who had not only gobbled the canary, but had also left a card asking for more.

Schultz grabbed LeBeau by the arm and fled, thinking he would be lucky if he only had to watch one prisoner in the cooler tonight.

* * *

><p>After his customary night patrol, Schultz returned to the cooler, resigning himself to a long, dreary night of boredom watching LeBeau and making sure he was still there in the morning. The only luxury allowed to both guard and prisoner was a chair for the former and a bench for the latter, and he could already feel his joints protesting in anticipation.<p>

He sat on the chair with a gloomy sigh, and crossed his hands on his ample stomach, trying to make himself as comfortable as he could, when a small, strange and completely foreign sound reached his ears. He frowned, puzzled, and risked a glance behind the bars next to him.

LeBeau was sitting on the bench with his hands in his lap, quite calm and still smiling. Tears he did nothing to stop were rolling down his face.

Concern immediately replaced puzzlement, and Schultz fumbled with the keys to open the door.

"What's the matter, LeBeau? Are you all right?"

The Frenchman shook his head, his smile widening. The familiar dimple on the right side of his mouth was showing.

"All right …? Yes, Schultz, I'm all right. I'm more than all right."

Schultz didn't really understand. His mind said this made no sense, but his instinct whispered that it did – exactly what kind of sense he didn't know, though. So, unsure of what to do, he ended up taking a seat on the bench next to LeBeau – who shifted to leave him a bit of room – and reached inside his uniform for a handkerchief.

"Thanks." LeBeau wiped his face, but kept the tissue in his hands.

Silence fell. The only sounds that reached the men in the cooler were the creaks of warm wood buildings getting colder, the odd whine or bark from the dog kennels, and the various small night noises Schultz had never been able to trace. Still he didn't move from his spot on the bench.

"Four years, Schultz. Four years." LeBeau's voice was soft, almost a whisper. This sudden sound in the relative silence should have startled Schultz, but it didn't. "My mother, my sisters … I was afraid I would never see them again even if I did escape. Anything – anything – could have happened to each of them. I thought about that for four years, every day." Something hollow and haunted flashed in his eyes for a second. "For all I know, something did this past week, and I won't find out until I get a letter."

The handkerchief didn't stop the tears, but no amount of tears could ever get in the way of that smile.

"They're free, Schultzie. My city, my home … My family, my friends … They're _free_. It's the most wonderful word in the world." He blinked. "Except for 'love', of course."

"I was wondering when you would get to that," said an uncharacteristically quiet Cockney-accented voice near the door. "You French are a bunch of 'opeless romantics, you are."

Newkirk was half-leaning on the cell door, a tray in his hands. If he noticed LeBeau's tear-streaked face – and it was difficult not to – he didn't show it.

"Brought you leftovers, mate. That Kraut general had no appreciation for French cuisine at all."

"You two should get along well, then," LeBeau retorted, the warm, grateful look he shot him belying the sarcastic words. Schultz steeled himself for a scolding, secretly glad to be back on familiar territory.

"Newkirk, how did you get in? I _know_ I locked the cooler door!"

"No, you didn't, you just closed it behind you."

"But I have the key and everything – I did?" Usually, it was so dreadfully easy to let Newkirk confuse him completely until there remained nothing he was certain of. Tonight, though, Schultz felt that the Englishman's heart was not really in it, and frankly he could not blame him. "Ach, well, I will lock it now, then. Come on, get out of there."

He lifted himself up from the bench, trying hard not to grin like a little boy while waiting for Newkirk to play his part. He did not have to wait long – in fact, he had not even reached the cell door when he heard a sly, "Oh, Schultzie? I think I have a little something here that has your name on it."

Three chocolate bars magically appeared between his fingers. "Would ya look at that. _Three_ little somethings. You're in luck, mate."

Through the sweet call of candy and his own stomach celebrating in anticipation, Schultz took a second to smile. There really was something endearing to these boys that he couldn't shake, which no amount of mockery, grief, insolence and confusion they could throw at him ever changed.

He chuckled. "All right, Newkirk. I won't report you. But no monkey business, ja?"

"Scout's honour," Newkirk said cheekily, with a tolerable but sloppy attempt at a scout salute. Schultz shook his head, smiling into his short moustache, and went back to his chair outside the cell.

Where he could listen to everything and hear nothing.

"The Guv said he'll get you out of here first thing tomorrow," came Newkirk's lowered voice after a while. "After the 'guests' leave, of course."

Silence.

"Look, Louis, I only needed a little diversion to get back, not a re-enacting of the bloody Battle of France! What did you have to get yerself chucked into the cooler for, eh? What were you thinking?"

Schultz could almost see LeBeau shrugging.

"I wasn't really thinking."

Newkirk snorted. "Big surprise."

There was a small chuckle – "Yeah." – followed by the tinkle of crockery. "Do you want some gratin?"

"Sure, I've always liked living dangerously." The two men fell silent while they shared the contents of the platter, and Schultz, who profoundly disliked being the only one not to eat, took out a candy bar and tore off the wrapping. It was fortunate he didn't take a bite right away, because the next thing he heard would have caused it to resurface immediately.

"So, did you get the information in the end?"

"Well, I 'ad plenty of time, didn't I?" Newkirk paused to swallow his mouthful of cold potatoes as Schultz considered putting his hands on his ears to block the conversation. Unfortunately, he could hardly do that while holding a candy bar. "Yeah, I did, and it was worth everything she said it would be. Played the nasty Kraut general's wife part well, didn't she?"

"I don't think she was playing, Newkirk. You should've seen her face when she looked at Carter – he may have made an enemy for life."

"As long as it's a _very_ long life, with the pond between them." A beat. "Say, this ain't half bad, even cold. Think you can make us some of that stuff some time?"

"Think you can get me an oven, milk, honey, potatoes and a pound of duck breast? …Forget I asked. Just don't take Klink's oven, he might notice."

The conversation seemed to be back on safer tracks. Schultz happily chomped into his candy bar, closing his eyes in delight. Chocolate truly was a marvellous invention.

"The white stuff was all gone, but I saved some of the crème anglaise."

"Newkirk, your pronunciation …"

"… What about it?"

"It's … not that bad."

Schultz heard a theatrical gasp. "Who are you, and wha' have you done with me picky pain of a French corporal?"

"Tu sais ce qu'il te dit, le Français, rosbif à la noix?"

"Frog eater."

"Barbarian."

"Short arse."

"Pickpocket." A pause. "… Pierre?"

"Yeah?"

"Merci, mon pote."

"You're welcome, mate."

Schultz didn't really know exactly what LeBeau was thanking Newkirk for, but he had a feeling it didn't matter much.

Colonel Hogan did manage to coax Kommandant Klink into releasing the French corporal from the cooler the day after, as usual. A couple of days later, Schultz found his handkerchief – cleaned, pressed and carefully folded – on the small bedside table in his quarters, next to what turned out to be the best, most gloriously scrumptious apple strudel he had ever tasted.

* * *

><p><span>Translationsnotes:

_Tu parles_: literally, "you talk"; another way of saying "yeah, right".

_Messieurs_: plural form of "monsieur". "M'sieur" works only in the context of a kid talking to a grown man, like a teacher or a stranger in the street, usually because he kicked his ball into a tree and wants help to get it back.

_Gut, gut_: "good, good".

_Entschuldigen Sie, bitte_: "I beg your pardon" (formal).

_Oh, et puis tant pis pour l'anglais!_: literally, "Never mind the English (language)"; means something like a colloquial but not rude at all way of saying "To hell with (speaking) English (_implied_, I'm switching to French)".

_C'est merveilleux, c'est formidable, c'est pas croyable …__!_: "This is/It's marvellous, it's fantastic, it's incredible …!"

_Merci bien_: more formal than "thanks a lot", less formal than "thank you very much". Not used a lot lately.

_Félicitations, monsieur_: "congratulations, sir."

_Vous parlez français, madame_?: "You speak English, ma'am/madam?"

_Ce sont des îles flottantes_: "They are floating islands." _Note:_ "Ce" in front of a vowel changes to "c' ", as in "**c'e**st une île flottante".

_The pond_: the Atlantic ocean.

_Tu sais ce qu'il te dit, le Français, rosbif à la noix?_: "(D')you know what this Frenchman says to you, you lousy Brit?" "Rosbif" (French deformation of "roast beef") is a derogatory French term for an Englishman; "à la noix" means something like "nut-flavoured", and I don't believe there's any naughty subtext. Yes, a lot of French expressions seem to feature food of some sort.

_Merci, mon pote_: Thanks, mate (exclusively a bloke).

* * *

><p>● The song LeBeau is singing is called <em>Paris <em>_sera toujours__ Paris_, a 1939 song by Maurice Chevalier; the chorus means something like:

_Paris will always be Paris  
>The most beautiful city in the world<br>Despite the deep darkness  
>Her lights cannot be dimmed …<em>

It was written just as France and Britain declared war on Nazi Germany; everybody was making preparations for war, including turning off the street lights at night, boarding up the windows and protecting statues and important buildings. The melody is fast-paced and the tone is light and cheeky, in keeping with Chevalier's comedic stage persona.

● Hitler had indeed ordered General Dietrich von Choltitz to raze Paris rather than to 'let it fall into enemy hands'; however, von Choltitz disobeyed and surrendered after six days' fighting, during which about 3200 Germans and 1600 Parisian civilians were killed. Paris was liberated on the 25th by the 2nd French Armoured Division and the 4th U.S. Infantry Division. In reality, the city itself actually wasn't that strategically important in the course of war; Field Marshall Hugo Sperrle (who at that time commanded the Luftwaffe on the Western front) would not have called back all his men to fight back for it. I took a bit of liberty with history because I wanted the Falkes to leave quickly :o)

● As for what the count of Cambronne said to English General Colville at Waterloo … He may have said two things. The first is the heroic but ultimately false (for him, anyway) "La garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas" (the Guard dies, but does not surrender). The second (which I went for) is the much shorter, more straightforward and rather hilarious "Merde!"

Hope you liked it! Only one chapter left :o]

_**Next up**_: How Schultz Learned To Stop Worrying And Let Prisoners Make Chicken Soup.


	5. Bouillon de Poule

**Author's note**: Whether the Hogan's Heroes plot bunny strikes again or not, I'll always treasure this fandom dearly, because it means my first completed chaptered story _**e**_ver. I've been writing fanfiction for practically eleven years, and I've completed 17 one-shots and the translation into French of a 4-chapter story, but this is the first time I manage to actually finish something that has more than one chapter. I know it's silly, but I'm actually rather floored by this :o)

Thank you so much for the warm response to this fic; I never hoped for (much less expected) half of the kind and encouraging comments it got. Merci beaucoup, and I hope you like this last chapter as well!

To ChaosandMayhem, thank you so much for being a great beta reader and an even better friend :o)

_Disclaimer: I own a brush-tip black marker (which is _perfect_ for doodling _Corto Maltese_ stuff and making the doodles look better than they are!) but I don't own _Hogan's Heroes_ – the show or the characters. I just like playing with them, but I'm putting them back when I'm done! Which is at the end of this chapter, really...  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>Soul Food<strong>

_**Chapter Five: Bouillon de Poule**_

_January 19th, 1945_

Sergeant Schultz stood in the relative shelter of the officer' mess hall door frame, watching snow fall and thinking about many things at once. Occasionally he remembered to shiver a bit to keep warm.

He thought about the Allies advancing, the Russian in the east and the rest – mainly American and British troops – in the west. Some said the winter might slow them down, some said the Wehrmacht would, but anybody with a smidgen of sanity or common sense would agree that it was barely a matter of a few months before they reached the Hammelburg area. Schultz could not yet decide if the thought terrified or relieved him, but at least the war would be over, for better or worse.

The second thought had a lot to do about snow.

Schultz had been no stranger to snow before the war, but now after spending so much time outside or in poorly heated barracks he felt he had seen every possible form of frozen water and had quite enough of it. There was the hard-falling curtain of white, the treacherously soft but relentless small flakes, the steel-hard slippery ice under your foot, the dripping stalactites, the off-white patches that seemed to stay forever …

Snow had never really meant danger, though. It had just been a nuisance.

The rumbling of his stomach naturally lead to another thought.

The first winter spent in Stalag XIII had been a disaster. They had been poorly organised, ill-equipped against the cold, food rations had been woefully miscalculated, but somehow everybody had survived while the farms in the vicinity had made a fortune selling them poultry and vegetables. Now, though, food was getting scarce everywhere, towns and countryside alike. The patch of potatoes behind Barracks 11 had grown a lot bigger than regulations allowed, and the prisoners had planted other vegetables around the camp, but quantities remained quite inadequate to feed so many men. Guards had it no different; earlier today, Schultz and twenty other guards had had to make do with one meagre chicken – Grüninger's cooking talents had not improved much over the past four years – and a couple of hours later he still felt hungry.

If someone had told him a few months ago that someday he would miss his wife's cooking, he would have laughed and laughed and told them to – what had Harper said that one time? Oh yes. 'Pull the other one, it's got bells on'.

Thinking about Harper drew his eyes to the left, toward the outlines of the infirmary barrack behind the falling snow. Yet another grim thought to add to the list.

The past few weeks had been the most miserable in – admittedly rather short – Stalag XIII history. Half the guards and two thirds of the prisoners had come down with the same bout of vicious, tenacious fever that a lot of people in Hammelburg were currently laid up with. Those it had spared had been left weak and shaking for days; the unlucky others had crowded up the infirmary, curled up miserably under heaps of blankets and muttering in their delirium while their fever spiked. It had got so bad that Schultz had ended up sidling up to Colonel Hogan and asking him for one of those miracles he and his men were prone to pull off, saying he didn't care what monkey business they had to do and was even willing to help if necessary.

Hogan had given him his first real smile in days, clapped him on the shoulder and answered with a sombre shrug that their usual fairy godmother was too short on gifts right now to spare any, and that they would have to ride it out.

Honestly, it was nothing short of a miracle that nobody died.

At least the worst of it seemed to be over now. Wilson, the camp medic, had told Schultz during morning roll call that Mackenzie's fever had finally gone down during the night, which meant that, of the last really serious cases, only two remained.

It had been completely different four years ago, Schultz reflected. He had worried for the prisoners then, of course, but they had been enemies, and, most of all, strangers. Now, after so many months getting to know them, talking with them, delivering their mail, not to mention letting himself get dragged into hairy schemes, things couldn't be more different. They all had names, voices, families. McLean, from Barracks 4, played the flute very well, and Cavanagh, who had a good voice and knew a lot of songs, usually accompanied him. Giamatti, from Barracks 9, had a little girl at home named Rosie, just like Schultz's own little Rosa. Hirsch had been an artist before the war, and had decorated the walls of Barracks 7 with small but colourful paintings Schultz liked so much he had never reported them to Klink although he probably should have …

And then there was the men from Barracks 2. The ones he knew best, but understood so little of. The ones who gave him the most grief, but the ones he'd ended up liking best, perhaps, of the whole camp. Why would he have done some of the most _insane_ things he had ever done in his life otherwise?

Speaking of the devils …

Schultz could make out three – no, four men walking in his direction, and even through the snow the figures were unmistakeable, though they showed little of their usual cheerful selves.

They clearly had a lot on their minds, too.

Carter gave him a half-hearted smile. It was a well-acknowledged fact in camp that the day Carter stopped smiling would be a definite sign that the end was nigh.

"Hi, Schultz."

"Hello, Carter." He frowned. "What are you boys doing here? It's not dinner time yet. And you, Newkirk, shouldn't you be in your barrack? Or in bed?"

The Engländer looked pale – even by usual British standards – and shivered more visibly than the others, but he returned Schultz's look of reproach with a steady stare and a fleeting cheeky smile.

"Wilson gave me the all-clear days ago, Schultzie. Besides, I was going mental in there anyway. You've played gin with _him_," he added, jerking a thumb towards a sheepish-looking Carter, "you should know."

From the side glance Hogan shot him, they clearly had had this discussion already, and Newkirk had won this round. If Colonel Hogan had agreed to let him out, it was a good sign.

"I have a few books, if you're bored," Schultz offered, knowing from experience that a bored, sick and worried Corporal Newkirk was a dangerous Corporal Newkirk. He only got a shrug in response.

"Nah, think I'll let that pass. _Mein Kampf_'s not all it's cracked up to be."

"Newkirk!" Schultz protested, stung. "I don't mean –"

Hogan interrupted him. "Relax, Schultz. We're here on business."

"Monkey business?" he asked warily. From behind Carter, Kinchloe's eyes twinkled.

"Cooking business, Schultzie."

The reason for their presence there suddenly dawned on the sergeant, and he gave a small smile. "You want to – oh, that's nice." Completely verboten, but nice all the same. "How are they, by the way?"

"Harper's fever broke down about an hour ago," said Hogan, looking as though he was making an effort not to sound tired. It wasn't working. "Wilson said he should improve now."

"And …?"

The colonel paused for a second and said, "Still no change."

Newkirk suddenly became very interested in the tips of his shoes.

Schultz thought of the last roll calls and the carefully folded red scarf on the empty bunk, and felt something twist unpleasantly in the region of his stomach. It quickly jumped up to his throat and tightened its grip.

"You know he'll pull through," came Kinchloe's quiet voice. When Schultz looked up, he found Carter staring at him. To his surprise, one corner of the American's mouth crooked up.

"'Course he will. He wouldn't let us down like that, would he? Not our Louis, no sir. Besides, that's why we're here."

"What? Why?" Schultz asked through whatever was blocking his throat, his voice sounding unusually high … unless the reason for it was an oncoming sense of dread, confirmed when Hogan crossed his arms in the all-too-familiar gesture that meant he was probably up to no good.

"We're engaging in a bit of pilfering, Schultz."

"Yeah, we're commandeering the mess hall," Carter piped up, stepping forward.

"You've had chicken today, right?" Kinchloe asked, sounding like he was checking a fact rather than asking a question.

Schultz's eyes jumped from one to the other in mounting confusion, trying to stay focused. They meant well, he knew they did, but prisoners not on KP duty were _not_ allowed in the officers' mess. Who knew what they might do with the knives, the forks, the food?

Apart from stealing stuff to make soup, that is.

"Colonel Hogan," he pleaded, wishing the commanding POW officer would show some sense for once – or at least try to see things his way, "I can_not_ let you all in there! What if one of the guards notices? What if Kommandant Klink notices?"

"So you can let _one_ of us in, but not more?" Hogan said, and the faint spark in his eyes told Schultz this was a losing battle. He plodded on anyway.

"No, I can't let any prisoner in, no matter who or how many he is. I mean …"

"You said we can't all go in there," Carter pointed out, one gloved finger raised. "So, technically, it means that one of us can. Or some of us. Hey, how're we gonna decide? Are we gonna vote or something?"

Schultz opened and closed his mouth wordlessly. Kinchloe's slight smile was one more nail in the coffin of his duty.

"A vote sounds a reasonable choice."

"One man, one vote – the democratic way," said Hogan, something Schultz failed to identify flashing in his eyes. "Sounds fair to me."

"But, Colonel Hogan," Schultz groaned, "a prisoner of war camp is not a democracy!"

"Wait a minute, Schultzie," interrupted Carter, his tone almost cheerful. "You agreed that at least one of us could get in, now we're just deciding who it's going to be."

"But – but –" Schultz was floundering, and he knew it. He tried to hang on to the last weapon he had left – diversion. "What are you planning to make, anyway? The truck only arrives tomorrow. I think there are a few potatoes left, and perhaps a rutabaga or two, but apart from that …"

"What, you ate the whole chicken?" asked Kinchloe, one eyebrow raised. "Didn't you leave anything at all?"

Schultz knew he was not supposed to apologise to a prisoner. It was probably written somewhere in one of Kommandant Klink's camp rule books. But it was difficult not to when they were looking at him like that.

"Sorry, Kinchloe. Even the bones are gone – Grüninger gave them to the dogs."

It was subtle enough, but the disappointment was obvious. Shoulders slumped slightly, smiles sank, and Newkirk mumbled, "Well, so much for that."

The five low, terse words from the normally talkative Englishman were a bigger blow to Schultz's resolve than the entire conversation had been. He gave a small sigh.

"He's still not eating anything, is he?"

Silence answered his question.

"Always been a picky little blighter, that one," Newkirk muttered with a half-hearted attempt at derision that fooled no-one, even Schultz.

"It's been five days," Carter said in a small voice. "Even Mills was keeping food down after five days." He paused, then added thoughtfully, "I bet he's really hungry."

"Kinch here knows a recipe for chicken soup he got from his grandma," Hogan picked up, a hand on his sergeant's shoulder. "A kind of light broth, with rosemary and other herbs. So we figured –"

"Wait …" The word 'broth' had jolted something in Schultz's memory. He had indeed kept something from the hapless chicken. "I stored the cooking water just in case. Perhaps you can make soup from that."

Judging from the men's reactions, they could. Carter's grin was the largest by far, and even Newkirk perked up.

"Did you save it to make soup, then?" asked Kinchloe with the hint of a smile behind his moustache. Schultz shrugged.

"No, it's just a habit I picked up from the little cockroach. He always does that when …" He trailed off when his eyes and ears caught up with his mouth, and groaned. Leave it to him to add the final proverbial straw that made his own resolve vanish. "Ooh, _fine_. I suppose making soup isn't such a bad idea. But I can't let you go in there unsupervised!"

"That's okay, Schultzie," Hogan said, clapping him on the back as he strode past him on his way inside the officers' mess. "I'll mind the kids, you mind the store."

"We promise we'll be on our best behaviour," Carted piped up, following the colonel inside before Schultz could even think of reacting, let alone decide how.

"Don't worry, your secret is safe with us," added Kinchloe in such an earnest, sincere voice that it made Schultz wonder if the man actually was serious or if he was just being ironic. Unless it was sarcastic. Schultz always mistook one for the other, and as a result he disliked both on general principles.

Hence his wariness when Newkirk stopped in front of him as well and grinned, blue eyes twinkling. As it turned out, he needn't have worried this time.

"Thanks, mate. You're all right, you know."

"Of course I am, when I do what you ask," Schultz grumbled, fighting an oncoming smile. The Engländer's own grin widened, with a trace of wickedness.

"Well, yeah, there is that. But you saw nothing, right?"

"_Noth_ing – nothing at all!"

"Smashing." The usual chipper undertone was back in his voice, but something in his eyes made Schultz call him back.

"Oh, Newkirk?"

"Yeah?"

Schultz hesitated a little before venturing tentatively, "I know it looks very bad, but don't worry. I'm sure the cockroach will be all right in the end." What 'the end' would be, he didn't know, but he hoped every man in camp would be alive to see it.

Newkirk's eyes widened. "'Worry'? Nah, I'm not worried. Never was. He's just taking his bloomin' time to shake this thing off, that's all. Do I look worried to you?"

Schultz crossed his arms and stared at him pointedly. Newkirk stared right back, then shuffled a bit in the dirty snow, clearly uncomfortable.

"Oh, all right, yes, of _course_ I'm worried. Been going spare cooped up in the barrack staring at that bloody scarf. It's not right that it's there and he's not. It was bad enough when it was Baker or Mills, and you know how Mills got, but … Well." He planted his hands in his pockets, his expression a weird mix of defensiveness and the tiny hint of a self-conscious smile. "He's me little mate. Closest thing to a brother I got if you don't count Carter … A five-foot-tall Frog with a temper, a big mouth and a heart that's bigger than he is. Funny thing, life."

"Too bad you don't like what he cooks, eh?" Schultz said, smiling what he hoped came across as a sly grin at catching his favourite cynical Englishman in a rare heartfelt moment.

Newkirk shrugged. "Yeah, about that … I hate to say it, because you know how insufferably smug he gets, but his cooking isn't so bad. In fact, sometimes it's actually ruddy good." He paused, as though only just registering what he had said. "But don't tell him I said that," he quickly amended.

A sense of déjà vu sneaked up on Schultz until a vague, four-year-old memory resurfaced, drawing a large, sincere smile from him, the likes of which he hadn't felt in weeks.

"Oh, I won't, Newkirk. As a matter of fact I heard nothing."

Newkirk tilted his head slightly to the side and stared at him, one eyebrow cocked quizzically.

"You never do, Schultzie, do you?" A smile made his way onto his face, and he patted the sergeant on the arm in a friendly manner that meant Schultz probably didn't need to check his pockets. "Well, I'm off to make soup. Come on in, this should be worth a butcher's."

Before Schultz could open his mouth to ask exactly what a butcher had to do with chicken soup, Newkirk had joined his comrades in the kitchen; a couple of seconds later, he heard him exclaim, "What d'you mean, '_do you know what rosemary looks like_'?"

FIN – THE END – ENDE

* * *

><p><em>bouillon de poule<em>: chicken (literally, hen) broth

_verboten_: forbidden

_a butcher's (hook)_: a look

* * *

><p>I probably wouldn't have written this story at all if it hadn't been for François, my husband, best friend, partner in crime and lots of other things, who loves to cook; he was the one who taught me cooking wasn't as complex and daunting as I thought, and didn't have to be – you just need a little passion :o)<p>

Thank you all for reading! I hope you have a fantastic New Year's Eve réveillon (dinner/evening), and I wish you all the best for 2012 :o]


End file.
